The struggle for Shiʿi orthodoxy in 20th and 21st century Pakistan and its ties to transnational Shiʿism in Iraq and Iran
Department of Near Eastern Studies 110 Jones Hall Princeton, NJ 08540
Muhammad Qasim Zaman
I am interested in theological and legal debates among Pakistani Shi'i religious scholars (ʿulamāʾ) and their struggles for orthodoxy since the late colonial period. My dissertation inter alia traces shifting conceptions of religious authority, the intellectual reception of the Iranian revolution and the changing nature of sectarianism in South Asia. I pay close attention to transnational links between Pakistan, India and the Middle East and study how ideas are translated, appropriated and resisted when they travel between these regions, between the supposed “periphery” and the “center”.
I have co-taught the courses “Muslims and the Qurʾan” with Prof. Muhammad Qasim Zaman and “Introduction to the Middle East” with Prof. Michael Cook.
“Failing Transnationally: Intersections of Science, Medicine, and Sectarianism in Modernist Shiʿi Writings,” forthcoming 2014 in Modern Asian Studies “Third Wave Shīʿism: Sayyid ʿĀrif Ḥusain al-Husainī and the Impact of the Iranian Revolution in Pakistan,” forthcoming 2014 in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society “Do excellent surgeons make miserable exegetes? Negotiating the Sunni tradition in the ǧihādī camps,” Die Welt des Islams 53,2 (2013): 192-237. Ḥosayn ʿAlī Montaẓarī, “Religious Government and Human Rights (Ḥokūmat-e dīnī va ḥoqūq-e ensān),” trans. Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, Die Welt des Islams, 52, 1 (2012): 69-102 Proper Signposts for the Camp. The Reception of Classical Authorities in the Ǧihādī Manual al-ʿUmda fī Iʿdād al-ʿUdda (Würzburg: Ergon, 2011)
Hyde Summer Fellowship, Travel Grant of the Deutsche Morgenlaendische Gesellschaft, Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst, DAAD Study Abroad Fellowship